1. Field
Example embodiments relate to a procurement system and, in particular, to a voice enabled procurement system.
2. Description of the Related Art
Business users using procurement systems typically retrieve information and act upon it to conduct a sourcing or procurement activity. The efficiency of conducting procurement operations through any system depends on the user's familiarity with the system and related data sources. The user also needs to understand the graphical user interfaces for using the system to seek information or make decisions. In effect, the speed with which the user is able to get information or perform an activity accurately is greatly determined by the user's knowledge of how to use the system and where to look for the specific information.
Consider an example of a user who wants to find the quarterly spend of a specific business unit on a specific category. The user needs to go into the spend system, find the category specific spend, then filter it by the specific business unit, and, finally, filter it based on the time period. The above steps need a user who knows the tool and, at the same time, understands the various data elements present in the system to derive the information that he/she is seeking.
Consider also problems associated with transactional activities related to procurement operations. Large organizations raise POs across various categories frequently. In this scenario, category buyers need to keep tab of their orders and interact with the suppliers regarding delivery and shipments. If a buyer wishes to pull out all the orders which have been partially invoiced for a particular category in a specific business unit, he would have to go through multiple steps involving filtering of information which is very cumbersome. Alternatively, a user needs to create a new report with the above mentioned constraints. For the latter, the user would again need to know the data elements which is not easily learned.
Consider also the problem a business user has in seeking information about the firm's exposure to a specific supplier across the globe. For large organizations, the number of contracts across various geographies, regions and categories would run in a few hundred thousand. In these cases the user needs to search for the contracts narrowing his search from geographies to regions to categories. This would be a lengthy process as the numbers could be very high.